News: Sturm: Why Cowboys Fans Are Victims of Their Own Memories

A few weeks ago, we got back into the idea that Cowboys fans are entitled and even spoiled, I know for a fact that I bothered quite a few of you who consider your franchise to be amongst the most disappointing franchises in the league for what is almost 2 complete decades. How could I say such a thing?

I often say such things because I don't believe there is a fan-base that is disgusted by wins like this fan-base is, as proven again by the win against the Vikings a few weeks back. Usually, a win is torn apart like a loss, with each segment of the squad discussed in a way that by the end of the discussion makes you feel like we are examining the rubble of another loss. The bar is high around here, they say. But, that has nothing to do with the team - that has more to do with where the bar was left. I have often said when you take away the losses and the ugly wins, Cowboys fans only feel good about themselves and their team about 3-4 times a year. And, in my opinion, that is no way to enjoy football.

Let's just get to the point. The franchise you love - the most valuable football franchise that there is, and a franchise that shovels in more cash than anyone every single year to become even more valuable - has a resume that includes 5 Super Bowl Titles, 10 Conference Championship Titles, 21 Division Titles, and 30 Playoff Appearances. Those are all marks that compare favorably to nearly any franchise who has ever fielded a team.

When you are asked about your Hall of Fame QB, you have to ask which one? Same for Hall of Fame RB, Hall of Fame WR, and so on. Which legendary Cowboys coach are you referring to? Which Super Bowl Title? Which Parade? Which Dynasty? And so on and so on.

And here is what a Cowboys fan doesn't want to hear; you have been hopelessly spoiled because of that success. It has ruined football for many of you. Now, if the Cowboys have a 10-win or yes, even a 13-win season like in 2007, nobody can enjoy it, because they simply are measured by Super Bowls. Unless this 13-win team closes the deal with a Super Bowl, this year won't even matter. That happened. The best Cowboys team in the last 2 decades had a large swath of its biggest fans doubting whether it was really a good year, because they knew, in the end, they likely weren't going to win the Super Bowl.

Sturm's premise is completely wrong. Many fans aren't disappointed because they aren't winning. They're disappointed, bored, frustrated, whatever because the organization has been spinning its wheels for 20 years. There is no hope of a better day soon with the drunken old fool we have at the helm right now. The disappointment of a given loss or bad play lingers for a few minutes or hours, or days at most. The specter of Jones' ego hangs over the organization on a full time basis, 365 days a year.

If the Cowboys were a legitimate SB contender, great. If they were a 3-13 team trying to rebuild the roster from the ground up, great. Personally, those 1st couple years of watching Jimmy Johnson build his teams were some of my most satisfying as a fan. Even the 1-15 year was just something I knew had to happen if we were going to get high draft picks and purge all the old players left over from the Landry years. Almost any fan could see in 1990 Johnson was on the right path to building an NFL juggernaut.

But now? We see the same mess, year in and out. No rebuilding. No excellence in player development. Coaching hires that are obvious fail from the minute they're made. A circus atmosphere, complete with pole dancers at the stadium and the team running through a bar on the way to the field. So, no, the disappointment this Cowboys fan holds for the team has little to do with week in, week out wins and losses. And judging from the majority of posts the last few years, I'm not alone in that sentiment.

I didn' even read the article, but if Sturm is trying to justify just ll aroun mis-management in this era of free agency, he's got to find other buyers. If Sturm is trying to justify crappy coaching, with better talent then man of the teams across the league, I an't buying.

It's a reasonable expectation for one's team to be at least average in terms of playoff success. The Cowboys are one of only three NFC teams who haven't played in an NFC Championship in 17 years. That's not even average. That's poor.

It's a reasonable expectation for one's team to be at least average in terms of playoff success. The Cowboys are one of only three NFC teams who haven't played in an NFC Championship in 17 years. That's not even average. That's poor.

Right on cue the usual suspects are here defending their sometimes absurd opinions from an article that hits too close to home.

I had a sentence in my post above that mentioned the inevitable board reaction to that article that I removed because I didn't want to start off inciting an argument, but, yeah, it is pretty predictable. Sturm took the time and made the point better than I would, anyway, but that article encapsulates perfectly both the disappointment and entitlement that plagues Cowboys fans right now.

Given how they react to competitive, 500-football, I often find myself wondering what it'd be like around here if the team were actually a bad one. There really aren't adjectives much stronger than 'disgusting,' 'pathetic,' 'horrible.' At some point, the actual realists are going to need such words, and there are going to be none of them left for us because we wasted them all the week after the Minnesota win, or whatever, when we had won 3 games out of the last 4 and were alone in first place in the division.

Don't know about anyone else but I don't care what bob sturm thinks about what kind of fan I am.

He's doing his best to describe the situation, theebs. I don't think he's criticizing individual fans. Not to mention that you don't really fit into that general category of fans he's commenting on, anyway.

Sturm's premise is completely wrong. Many fans aren't disappointed because they aren't winning. They're disappointed, bored, frustrated, whatever because the organization has been spinning its wheels for 20 years. There is no hope of a better day soon with the drunken old fool we have at the helm right now. The disappointment of a given loss or bad play lingers for a few minutes or hours, or days at most. The specter of Jones' ego hangs over the organization on a full time basis, 365 days a year.

If the Cowboys were a legitimate SB contender, great. If they were a 3-13 team trying to rebuild the roster from the ground up, great. Personally, those 1st couple years of watching Jimmy Johnson build his teams were some of my most satisfying as a fan. Even the 1-15 year was just something I knew had to happen if we were going to get high draft picks and purge all the old players left over from the Landry years. Almost any fan could see in 1990 Johnson was on the right path to building an NFL juggernaut.

But now? We see the same mess, year in and out. No rebuilding. No excellence in player development. Coaching hires that are obvious fail from the minute they're made. A circus atmosphere, complete with pole dancers at the stadium and the team running through a bar on the way to the field. So, no, the disappointment this Cowboys fan holds for the team has little to do with week in, week out wins and losses. And judging from the majority of posts the last few years, I'm not alone in that sentiment.

I wish their was a LOVE button.. because you just knocked it out of the park with this post. I'm honestly sick of Sturm and his know it all attitude. I'm tired of him saying we are all spoiled etc and get upset even over wins. The Vikings game was a prime example of a team we SHOULD have dominated. I get it, it's the NFL and anything can happen and you have to be happy even over the bad wins.. but the problem is much deeper than that. You see the horrible cracks on the team and you can tell we are going to get beat down against the good teams.

I also completely agree with you. Our team is in the twilights zone right now. We are literally not going in any particular direction.. other than rotting away in mediocrity. I honestly wouldn't mind a few bad season if I knew it meant we would re-build. Instead we keep over paying players and keeping them around long after they have ANY value left. We are doing nothing more than kicking the can down the road year after year. It honestly reminds me of our country right now. We just keep printing money to keep things going.. but never sit down and address our problems. We have an ego maniac owner who is sabotaging our team! Also, don't talk to me about past success when you haven't done jack squat in 18 years.

Mixed feelings about this one. I agree that some fans are irrational with expectations from players and the team as a whole, but I don't think the bright side is that other teams have been worst. The cowboys have been mismanaged over the years and that's lead to the mediocrity more than anything else. I speak for my self, but that's the most frustrating thing about this team.

This is a good post. I certainly don't feel entitled because I am a Cowboy fan, but the measure of success each year is and will forever be postseason wins for me.

Me, too. I also don't think any fans think the last few years have been successful, for just that reason. The question is, how do you go about building a successful team and, ultimately, what's your tolerance for that process.

I agree with Sturm to a point. In fact, I was discussing this with a couple of friends of mine in trying to explain the difference between Cowboys vs. Redskins fans.

Many Cowboys fans are unhappy when the team wins. There is this big need to always point out how Jerry is bad and will fail. It's one thing when the team loses, but it's another when the team wins. The '07 season made me realize this when the team went 13-3 and in the middle of the *regular season* the media and many of the fans were miserable over it. And the growing sentiment started to be that 'well, they'll get killed by the Patriots in the Super Bowl' and they were giddy over that prospect. Even when the team does win, there are fans that are upset about it because they don't want to admit that they were wrong and they were more or less sheep for the media's lazy nonsense.

Redskins fans can get crapped on by Daniel Snyder every way possible and will be irate during losing. But once they have a glimmer of even perceived success, they start proclaiming that they are going to win the Super Bowl.

It's really a unique dichotomy of two rival fanbases.

Where I disagree with Sturm is that we haven't seen a lot of 13-3 or even 10-6 seasons lately.

I think there's a blend here of past success, Jerry taking over and firing Landry, Jerry's personality, Jerry firing Jimmy and media's desperation in attempting to draw in readers, Web site clicks and viewers that bring all of this to the forefront. A lot of fans aren't really fans of the team. They are just marks for Jerry and the media. They remind me of the pro wrestling fan that says 'this was the worst Pay Per View ever and I'm never going to buy another PPV from Vince McMahon' and then there they are...purchasing Summerslam.